


The Adventure Of The Repellent Philanthropist

by Cerdic519



Series: Further Adventures Of Mr. Sherlock Holmes [22]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Cornwall, F/M, Helpful Sherlock, M/M, Philanthropy, Slow Burn, Survivor Guilt, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 09:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15045983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: Trouble seems to attract itself to some people, no matter how good and innocent they are - and this new trouble for Mr. Harry Buckingham leads to Sherlock meeting one of the most loathsome creatures ever at England's furthest point.





	The Adventure Of The Repellent Philanthropist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MelodyofWings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelodyofWings/gifts).



_Introduction by Sir Sherrinford Holmes, Baronet_

My brother Sherlock held a cynical view of most things in life, and tended to think the worst of people as a matter of course. Whilst this occasionally steered him ill – he told me more than once that he rued bitterly the cruel words he had used concerning Watson's early literary efforts on his behalf – he was more often than not proven right about human nature. Never more so than in this case, when the ghosts of the past threatened to come back with a vengeance against someone who, more than most, deserved a bright future. Sherlock ensured that such interference was kept at a safe distance, even if it involved him having to meet one of the most repellent examples of humanity that he had ever come across, someone who really should have been dead.

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>

_Narration by Mr. William Sherlock Scott Holmes, Esquire_

Contrary to what some annoying elder brother of mine claimed, I was _not_ sulking at my fellow room-mate's extended absence in the Americas. And there was a perfectly good reason why I had not taken up Mrs. Hudson's offer of having someone else move in whilst the good doctor was away wooing some undeserving female of passable looks, an absence which would I knew become permanent once the new Mr. and Mrs. Watson settled on their own house. And I really did not like it when Sherry and Kean smirked at each other like that!

No, not like _that!_ Or at least not in my rooms, or I would have had to explain to the local constabulary just why Mrs. Hudson had murdered the pair of them!

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>

I was surprised but not displeased to return from my walk that day and find a visitor waiting for me. It was none other than Miss Day, the efficient assassin employed by Middleton's the information agency. I hoped that she might have some small task for me, as I was finding living alone unusually taxing for some reason. 

The lady looked at me far too knowingly, but got swiftly down to business. And it was no small matter that had brought her to 221B. Indeed, it was a matter of the gravest import, most unusually for someone whom I had helped before.

“Mr. Harry Buckingham may be in trouble”, she said.

I winced. The illegitimate son of Lord Toby Hawke, whose disinheritance I had helped prevent some years back (the Andover case). I wondered if Miss Day's presence had anything to do with the recent death of Lord Theobald Hawke which had led to Mr. Buckingham, (now in his mid-twenties, becoming the new Lord Harry (he was not really a 'Henry') Hawke.

“You said 'may'”, I noted. “How bad is it?”

“It dates from his marriage some five years back”, my visitor explained, “but certain events pursuant to that have only come to light in the past few days. We do not think that the matter is urgent but it is certainly irregular and we at Middleton's do not like irregular. Besides, Miss Richards rated the late Lord Tobias as a good human being, and therefore deems any threat to his offspring as 'undesirable'.”

As in 'best moved to the bottom of the Thames in concrete footwear undesirable', I guessed.

“How can I help?” I asked.

“Mr. Buckingham as he was then married Miss Elizabeth Benfleet at the end of 'Eighty-One”, she said, “and as I am sure you are aware they have had three children since, two boys and a girl. It is a happy marriage, but given the ill-fortune that dogged first the poor young gentleman's father and later himself, we at Middleton's have been keeping an eye on him just in case. There is no logical basis for it, but some people seem to just attract misfortune.”

I thought of my and Watson's friend Peter Greenwood, who when I first knew him had been exactly that sort of person. Fortunately his marriage seemed to have turned his luck around; he had recently received a surprise bequest from a cousin of whom he had been totally unaware and was about to become a father again. I had been pleased; like Mr. Buckingham he was one of those who deserved the Fates to smile on them.

“You may have read about the recent collapse of the lawyers Clarke & Heseltine in the Temple”, my visitor went on. “All sorts of financial and sexual malpractices; the newspapers had a field-day with it. They were, as you doubtless know, the Hawke's solicitors in the last year. Middleton's helped expose the company's dealings and amongst the papers we found something strange. Someone has been arranging regular payments to a bank account, the income from which has been passed on to Mr. Buckingham in the guise of share income.”

I was surprised.

“Surely it could be only a small amount?” I asked. I had several sets of shares myself, but although the income from them was always welcome I could not have described it as large. Miss Day shook her red curls.

“It is definitely not share income” she said, “and is indeed too large to really be such. The money was and still is being transferred from a bank in Cornwall – Truro, to be exact – and they were acting on instructions from someone based in the Scilly Islands, off the west coast of that county. Someone there is transferring a large sum of money to Mr. Buckingham and attempting to do it covertly.”

“To what end?” I wondered. “Not blackmail surely, unless they intend to claim he knew he was receiving it fraudulently, and that would be impossible to prove.”

“As I said, most irregular”, Miss Day said. “We would ask that you go to the islands and investigate. I have an idea as to what I think might be behind all this, and I really hope that I am wrong.”

I looked anxiously at her. I could well guess what her idea was.

“I have the unfortunate feeling that as ever, you are not”, I said worriedly. “I shall depart tomorrow.”

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>

As it happened I did not head to Cornwall the next day because I had an unexpected visit from my brother Sherry.

“Kean has had to go to Lancashire for the reading of his uncle's will”, he said glumly. “The old fellow was disgustingly rich and wanted every family member to be there; he said that anyone who was not would not receive a farthing. He was so mean even old Ebenezer Scrooge would have considered him tight.”

He looked unhappy at being deprived of his giant partner, so I told him about my trip to the West Country. To my surprise his eyes lit up.

“Perhaps you might do me a service, then?” he asked hopefully. “Do you remember Blaze?”

I looked hard at him.

“Your partner owns over a dozen molly-houses”, I pointed out, “with well over a hundred gentlemen offering their 'services' therein. I can hardly be expected to remember all those who work there.”

“Blaze Trevelyan, 'the Fisherman's Friend'”, he said promptly (it always worried me that someone as normally scatterbrained as he was could recall every detail of his 'catalogue'). “He hales from Cornwall. He brought me a note that time when we were dining in the Grand.”

Now I did remember, a handsome fellow with the most unusual strawberry blond hair. 

“His younger brother Lowen is a fisherman in the islands”, Sherry said, “and wishes to come to London. Blaze is anxious as you may well imagine. It would really put his mind at ease if you could accompany him back here; he is set to leave any day now.”

I sighed. I really did not wish to be encumbered with some slow yokel for the whole trip back to the metropolis, but Sherry looked so down at being deprived of his oversized human shield that I felt I had to say yes. 

I was growing soft in my old age!

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>

Even with the offices of the Great Western and Cornwall Railway Companies, it was still the best part of a day before I arrived in Penzance, and with it still being technically summer I was grateful to find a small guest-house that could accommodate me. I expected to have to spend at least one night in Hugh Town, the port and capital of the islands where the ferry docked. 

The following day I caught the ferry to the islands, which lie some thirty miles off the south-western tip of Cornwall. It is believed that in times past they may have been connected to the rest of England when sea-levels were lower than they are today, and they were both surprisingly warm and quite beautiful. Hugh Town was quaint in a tourist-y way and I managed to find an adequate hotel. 

My first task, I decided, was to find Mr. Lowen Trevelyan and make sure that he knew to wait to return to London with me. He was, as Sherry had said, a fisherman, and like his brother was possessed of an unusual hair colour, in his case a strange white-blond which was only accentuated by his pale blue eyes. He was grateful for my assistance in getting him safely to London, and was in return able to provide me with what turned out to be some useful assistance in my investigations.

“You'd be looking for someone who came here way back”, he said. “Strangers in a place like this stick out. There's a religious community on Annet, the island beyond St. Agnes. Been there for years, but just over twenty years ago some fellow with more money that sense decided to settle on the island with them and had a cottage built. Rare that, people moving onto an island.”

“Twenty-seven years ago?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I'm only eighteen, sie”, he smiled, “so before my time. But if you buy old Fred who mends the nets a pint, he'll know.”

Mr. Trevelyan had been right. I did not know whether to be sorry or glad when his friend confirmed that the dates of poor Lord Toby Hawke's fatal travails and the arrival to the island of the strange rich gentleman matched all too well. Now I had to go to Annet myself and see if my worst fears were indeed true. And if they were – what was there to do about it short of murder?

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>

Annet was so small as to not merit its own ferry service, although the St. Agnes mail boat continued to there when necessary before returning to Hugh Town. However it naturally waited for the boat from the mainland, so would not sail until the afternoon. Fortunately Mr. Trevelyan, although he had sold his boat, was able to call in a favour and persuade one of the other fishermen to take us both out.

The island of Annet was tiny, comprising two sections of about three hundred yards each in length joined by a narrow isthmus. There was a tiny harbour on the north-west corner of the island and a wooden pier into which I was able to scramble. Mr. Trevelyan said that he stay with his friend Mr. Barrow and help him fish, and that they would remain within sight of the pier so they could collect me when I was done.

A barely discernible path led past first the cottage that I had been told about then to a small shepherd's hut by the isthmus before entering the southern section of the island and reaching the monastery. I walked to the cottage and knocked at the door. It was opened by an elderly man who had to have been in his sixties at least. Definitely not Mr. Milton Carew who, I knew, would have been forty-five by this time.

“I am sorry to bother you”, I said politely, “but I am looking for a friend of mine, a Mr. Pasco Meredith. He writes to me often, but his handwriting is so terrible that I only know that he lives at a cottage close by an abbey on one of the outlying islands.”

The man nodded.

“It's probably Tresco you'd be wanting”, he said, his Cornish accent very clear. “That's the only other religious place of any size out here.”

“This place seems wonderfully remote”, I observed. “Have you lived here long, may I ask?”

“Mary and I, we've lived here years now”, he said. “We were lucky; the chap who was having this place done up drowned when he went out too far one day, the place all but ready for him to move into. His brother inherited and wanted a quick sale as he lived up North somewhere.”

I thanked the man and apologised for disturbing him, then left. I sat down on a stone seat outside the shepherd's hut to think for a while. Then I pulled myself together and walked towards the abbey. I was not the least bit religious, but I prayed anyway.

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>

I was admitted to the presence of the Father Abbot, a small, almost round and bespectacled man in his sixties. I could see why this place, like Lindisfarne and Iona, had been set up where it had been; the solitude was what some men craved even if I was sure that it would have driven me mad with boredom in next to no time. Watson would probably have liked it, though.

“I am here on a somewhat delicate matter”, I began. “I am afraid that I must be blunt. Just over a quarter of a century ago, a man came to your abbey and asked for admission as a brother. I know that it is not the way to question those who seek refuge in a holy place, but I must tell you that this man was implicit in two crimes.”

The abbot smiled at me. He would have made a good poker player, I thought.

“And what crimes may they have been, sir?” he asked.

“The courting and abduction of another man's fiancée”, Holmes said. “And the subsequent suicide of that man, in shame at having been cuckolded.”

“Neither of those are what a court would consider criminal offences”, the abbot pointed out.

“I merely require to speak with the brother involved”, I said. “As you say, he cannot be brought before a court of law, although as you and I both know he will like all of us one day stand before a higher court that operates on divine justice, not English law, and I fully believe that he will then be found guilty and pay the appropriate penalty. But there is someone else involved – an innocent young man – and more lives may well be damaged if I do not speak with the man that you have here.”

The abbot weighed my request, then nodded.

“You may talk with Brother Miles”, he said. “He is in the herbarium, the walled garden that was to the left as you came in.”

I stood and bowed.

“Thank you, Father.”

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>

Despite the very different setting, the place reminded me a little of one of my schools in the English countryside. Only the warm weather and the gentle sound of the waves lapping at the nearby shore told me that I was most definitely not in the West Riding of Yorkshire any more.

The herbarium was small but well-ordered. A middle-aged monk was resting on a bench outside a small shed, surveying his domain.

“Brother Miles?” I asked. 

The man looked at me suspiciously. 

“Or should I say, Mr. Milton Carew?”

“Do I know you, sir?” the monk inquired frostily. 

“I am here on behalf of one Mr. Harry Buckingham”, I said.

There. A definite reaction.

“Should I know that name?” the monk asked.

“The name of the young man whose father you drove to his death?” I said icily. “Yes, sir. I think it a not unreasonable surmise that you _should_ know that name.”

I could see the moment that he gave up the pretence. His shoulders sagged.

“How much do you know?” he demanded.

“I know most of it”, I said. “You wooed and won Miss Jennifer Myrne-Green, despite her being affianced to Lord Toby Hawke. You cared nothing for him or for propriety; you merely wished to 'put one over' against the nobility, despite your own wealth – yes, I know about that too, sir. Once you had secured the lady's affections you abandoned her. The result was the unnecessary death of a brilliant young man, for which you and you alone are responsible.”

He shuddered. I felt dirty even being on the same island as him.

“You were in a most curious position”, I said. “Circumstance had made you rich – you inherited wealth from your late mother's family as she was the last of her line – but your own family, although they had stood by you thus far, rightly wanted nothing to do with a man with death on his hands. I know that you came here and, suspecting that you might be tracked one day, arranged for the cottage to be rebuilt and then yourself disappeared into the abbey. You gave the cottage to a couple who promised to spin a story of your demise should anyone ask, which they did to me when I called earlier today. I have only one question for you. Why a monk?”

The man smiled sourly. 

“Toby was an ass, but he was a good man”, he said. “I thought it would be such a lark, stealing Jenny like that. How was I to know he would go and do that to himself? I was rich beyond the dreams of avarice, but every time I closed my eyes I could see him lying there, bleeding to death. All because of me.”

I felt that I hated him even more. He deserved to have suffered for what he had done, the rat!

“And then my brother, who managed my affairs from the mainland, told me that he had learnt about Toby having a son and the boy to be raised by his sister”, he said. “I had to make sure he was all right, and Preston sorted it all. Why have you come after me?”

“Because”, I said, “there is an old saw that the truth will out. The death of Lord Toby attracted certain people who, knowing of his son's difficult inheritance, were determined that history should not repeat itself. Money, after all, attracts all kinds of attention, good and ill.”

He looked away from me.

“The recent collapse of a legal firm in London led to some friends of mine discovering about your payments to Mr. Harry Buckingham”, I said. “Naturally they were concerned. I suppose I must ask you more questions. I am to take it that you yourself have no interest in his fund?”

The monk shook his head.

“It is all run by Preston now”, he said. “I signed over full control to him. The only say I got was that Jenny's family had to be seen right, and he did that.”

“And you yourself have no plans to leave this island?” I asked coldly. “Because, sir, I have to say that those who look to protect Mr. Buckingham will not take it well should you attempt so to do.”

“This is my home now”, he said. “I am at rest.”

“Unlike poor Lord Toby!” I could not help but say. “I shall bid you farewell sir, in the most fervent hope that we will never meet again!”

I strode away angrily, glad to be leaving the place.

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>

Mr. Trevelyan and his friend picked me up, and we returned to Hugh Town. The ferry back to the mainland would not be calling for another three days, but I was almost desperate to leave the islands that I felt were sullied by that foul man's presence in them, and my young friend was king enough to find a colleague who, for a fair price, would take us both to St. Just where Mr. Trevelyan knew someone with a carriage that could get us to Penzance, although it was almost dark when we made the town. Never before or since had I been so desperate to leave the scene of one of my investigations.

I took a long bath in the hotel that evening, and still felt befouled by my experience. I did however wire Miss Richards early the following morning to let her know that all was well. I would as it happened return to this county for arguably my most famous unpublished case, when once again the rocky coasts of Cornubia would bring death and destruction – with the assistance of Man, of course.

۩۩۩۩V♔RI۩۩۩۩

>/p>


End file.
